Asif Zamir Toronto Business Consultant
Asif Zamir Official Website
I’m enjoying reading Donald Trump’s books and realizing that every business person goes through the same crap, we all pay the same dues.
Another week gone. It’s Friday. Well I still have a full day of work ahead of me and I’m working tomorrow also. LOL. Of course I’ll rest on Sunday.
Right now I’m drinking some expired instant coffee, hey I’m on a budget an I will be for a few more years! So I buy a few food items from the dollar store, I have to in order to make ends meet.
Protect your identity! Here are some tips I received from various sources over the last few months:
1.) Do not give out your driver’s license or social insurance number unless it’s absolutely necessary. You never know when paperwork will get into the hands of malicious people or professional identity thieves. As a small business consultant I’m constantly in the position of verifying my identity (especially when dealing with sensitive company information) and this can become a complicated situation.
2.) Don’t answer telephone surveys that ask too specific information. Again, I probably had telemarketers and phone survey people calling me at least once a month. When you run a small business you’ll end up on a lot of mailing and calling lists.
3.) Be careful of what links you click on in email. If the email looks suspicious, that should raise a red flag. Almost every popular website that holds personal information now has links regarding email security.
4.) Monitor your credit report at least once every 3 months. Most credit bureaus allow you to subscribe to a special service where they will contact you if a drastic change has been made to your file. Although it is natural for mistakes to show up once in a while, being vigilant will protect you in the long run, and don’t sweat the small mistakes, they can be corrected (although not necessarily quickly).
Any way, moving on. On Thursday I went to the doctor, and while sitting in his office waiting in ONLY my Homer Simpson boxers, he opens the door and I realize his office is right across from the waiting room, thus allowing everyone to see me.
On Friday the guys at youth went to a gaming place and we played computer video games for 2 hours. The last time I played a computer video game was on Mason’s computer about 4 years ago, and the last time I played any video game for 2 HOURS was probably 10 years ago. I don’t believe adults need to play video games that long.
I passed every part except the writing portion for my GED! To make things worse, I failed it by 1%. I have to redo that one portion to get my diploma.
Remember when you were a child, and you couldn’t wait to get out of bed in the morning? I don’t.
Sunday Sept 3, we woke up, drove gramma home, packed up Freddy’s SUV, and then drove sis to school for year 2. Her apartment (which she described to us as gorgeous with dishwasher and amenities) was a disgusting dump with roaches crawling everywhere. The poor girl apparently saw several apartments, and one was gorgeous but she signed the lease for this one. I feel bad for her.
We unpacked her stuff, setup her desk, chair, bed etc. We spent a few hours there, ate at pizza hut and then left. She slept over at Katie’s that night, and I suspect she’ll be sleeping over at Katie’s many more nights.
The next day (labor day) I worked and then went over to visit Mason and Eggbert, who had just moved back.
Mason and Eggbert and I visited sis to see how she was doing. I was disappointed that her apartment was still not cleaned or organized, and that her roommates seemed to be party animals. My sister had broken the mirror I made in 1994 shop class (grr), and she said Freddy did it. That’s what made me more angry. Is there anything I can do that my family won’t destroy and then blame on someone else?
Any way. I dropped out of high school to work so we could have some money, and I started college without getting a high school diploma. I realized that I need to get a GED in order to get my bachelors degree. So after a few years of talking about my GED (high school equivalency) I signed up for it 2 months ago. It was being held at 2180 Young Street in Toronto – the TVOntario office on the 7th floor. When I saw the big TVOntario logo on the wall I was reminded of some of my favorite childhood tv shows, and wiggling that tv antenna around so I could watch them clearly. Cucumber Club, Polka Dot Door, Today’s Special, Read All About It, Dear Aunt Agness, Elephant Club with Sharon Louis and Bram and what else…I can’t remember but there were more.
On Friday I left one hour early, but because of traffic I was one hour late for the exam. I pleaded to take the exam instead of re-scheduling, because I really didn’t know when I would have the time to come back. They accidentally put me down for the French exam so I was a bit flustered by that. Luckily I wrote my answers in English and I was able to use an English question book even though the rest of it was in French.
I did my exam and left about 1.5 hours early that Friday nite.
The next morning I woke up and left at 8am to get there for 8:45. I did my portion of the exam, finished early and then left and ate breakfast at McDonald’s. I then came back and did the next portion. There were breaks in between portions. After I had 1.5 hours to spare so I walked around downtown. I then came back and did the final portion of the exam. Leaving about 3 hours early. I thought I did pretty well, I’ll find out in a few weeks.
I drove home and then showered. I purchased a super cheap guitar at Walmart and I hope to fill another goal by it – to learn guitar.
Now honestly, this was really just half the stuff that happened these past 17 days.
This month I gave really nice furniture to a nice family from Newfoundland who live in Mississauga. A beautiful canopy bed for a girl, also a girls dresser, wall paintings, etc. You should have seen the excitement on her cute little face as I assembled the bed, I had to put the mattress on before I was finished so she could jump on it as soon as possible. Afterward her father showed me some great photos of his home town in Newfoundland and we had a beer, which is a tradition in Newfoundland. Actually I think 10 beers is the tradition, but I left it at one.
Any way, to the main story. In life, everyone will take a beating one way or another. Some people will get a few more beatings than others. Some beatings are physical, some emotional, some metaphoric. Some will get all different kinds. I got all different kinds and I got many of them.
When we lived at Brandon Gate, when I was exactly 11 years old, I took one such beating. I’ve had many beatings in my life than ended with blood and cuts and scars, but I remember this one a lot. I’ll remember this one for a long time.
Now let me paint the picture for you, at that time in life I was working part time, bringing in good money. I remember quietly setting aside a few bucks each month to buy a radio controlled car from Radio Shack. My neighbor was selling his gas powered radio controlled car but I couldn’t afford it, but I purchased a decent battery powered model from Radio Shack. I had to hide it in my room, in a hidden compartment I setup behind my desk. My parents had a decent grasp on my income and realized something was wrong with my account balance. I showed them the car, received a grounding for buying something for myself and it was sent to Guyana to more needy children. I explained that where we were sending it, they didn’t even have the electricity to charge the battery. I was helping them pay their car payments but I couldn’t have a toy car for myself. Story of my life.
I went to school, got decent grades (okay maybe that’s a stretch) and stayed out of trouble for the most part (that’s definitely a stretch). I did my chores, went to the mosque as ordered. Okay okay, I used to take their cars out for drives here and there. Just up and down Goreway drive and Brandon Gate and Morning Star and Airport Road. Why not, after all I was helping make the monthly payments, and it sure was more fun than a radio controlled car.
One day, after a long day at school, my step dad asked me to prepare soup for my sister, he couldn’t do it because that would cut into his beer time. I prepared the soup the wrong way (I didn’t add the can of water to her chicken noodle soup). In my defense I had to hurry and finish my chores and then get to work at my job and then finish my homework. I lied about my age to get a paper delivery job with the Toronto Sun and I could earn more money by signing up new subscribers so I spent hours each day knocking on doors saying “hello would you like to subscribe to the Sunday Sun?” It was a terrible sales pitch with less than a 1% success rate but my route was close to 100 subscribers.
While I was on my knees scrubbing the floor with a brush, my beating started. Now in past years I would scream and cry and beg for mercy, peeing on myself and sometimes trying to run. But this time around I took my beating, no tears, no shame. I was being punched in the head mostly. Punch after punch, not one tear but my voice was shaky.
I was beaten so hard I couldn’t stand up. Have you ever been punched in the head so hard that your ears rang, and your vision was blurred for days after? If not, then you’ve never been punched. Part way through this life lesson, I looked up at him and said with great emotion “I’m growing everyday, one day I will kill you.” It sobered him up right away because he knew it was very true. He said something along the lines of “I know”.
After I finished my chores I went about my work knocking on doors. I didn’t sign on even one new customer.
Less than year later they divorced and we moved a few roads down. When I was 12 I went to the Malton library and took out a few books about Karate. I would practice as much as I could each day. By age 13 I would fulfill one of my life long dreams, I studied Kung Fu at a really good martial arts school. Before you could join, you had to be interviewed by the main instructor. He was extremely impressed with what I had already learned just from books alone.
I had to save like crazy to afford it, it wasn’t cheap. And I had to take the bus a long way and come home really late. It wasn’t easy with all my responsibilities. There was this time when mom left for like 4 or 5 weeks at least, without telling us anything. She just upped and left and we knew better than to report her missing or go look for her, we knew she’d be back eventually. I was working at pickwicks potatoes at the time. I trained really hard, but it was hard carrying the family and doing school as well. Nevertheless I trained hard and I learned fast.
Training was awesome. Sometimes we trained in the dark, blindfolded, one on one, 3 on one, one person holding you down while another beats you. We would train after a hard workout and simulate different scenarios. We would learn how to take a beating. At home I trained as hard as I could including striking wood boards to harden up my knuckles and shins. My hands and feet would bleed and blister up badly, but we had to learn how to handle pain, to embrace it, to love it, to use it to our advantage. I became obsessed with hand to hand combat. I read every book, every magazine. I watched as many martial arts movies ever, usually going to obscure video stores to get them.
My teacher would have to partner with me during sparring because nobody else wanted to – I would give hard beatings to people twice my size, and they could punch and kick me all they wanted, I wouldn’t even flinch. After a few years my Kung Fu teacher would use me as the final opponent during tests and I wouldn’t let any one pass. I remember this one man, he was in his 30’s, I was in my teens. I was in the 90lb range, he was pushing 190. He was taller than me (most people are) and he thought he would have an easy pass. Smiling at me, I smiled back. I let him hit me several times then I kicked him in the side of his head like it was nothing. I felt bad for him when he failed, I felt even worst when he cried in the change room. He was an adult man, crying the way I cried when I was a child.
My instructor put extra effort into me. One of his concerns was that I could easily go to the dark side and become a bad guy. He would even drive me home sometimes, giving me wisdom about self control. I returned the favor by helping him promote his school on the internet which was a baby at the time.
In high school I would hold sort of “fight clubs” here and there. At first at the school but then some teachers caught on and gave me a lecture about insurance, so we would do it at different houses. My shop teacher introduced me to his veteran buddy who fought in world war 2 (to my recollection). I still remember the introduction in my mind. It was during shop class and went something like this:
Teacher: “Asif, meet my friend, he fought in this war, he knows 100 ways to kill a man.”
Asif: “Sir, please teach me everything you know.”
I would hang out with them both as much as I could. One time I kicked the crap out of a guy in the school locker room, this other guy who was already a black belt saw and challenged me and I quickly beat him too. Another time I dropped off a friend at one of those cool-people parties and when I was about to leave this big guy challenged me. It took me maybe 30 seconds to put him on the ground. I made a name for myself. The girl who lived at the party house invited me to go jogging with her, and I would end up teaching self defense to some high school girls at someones basement. Honestly if my life had a highlight reel, this would be in there somewhere.
After years of hard and faithful training, rising up in the ranks one belt at a time, I was in the black belt club, and I concluded my training when I was a young adult. I was proud of my martial arts training. Even wearing my uniform in public, even at church. It was a lifelong dream to do martial arts and I busted my butt to pay for it. From start to finish, I did it. If I had a different life I might have opened my own martial arts school, specifically a woman’s self defense class.
Many years later, instead of giving my step dad the beating (or worse) that I promised him as a child, I gave him a hug and a Bible and we became real friends.
Jesus is able to arrange that kind of thing. No other gods can do it.
When I was 16 years old I sat in the office of this newish company listening to one of the founders going on and on about what he was going to do. He used to call me up and ask me for business tips. I would give him the best tips I could think of. I had nobody to call and ask for help. I was on my own from day one. This is why it’s so important to use a business consultant. Today I saw in the news that his company generates sales of over $350 Million. I don’t know if he makes a profit from that, but if he kept to his plan, he could be earning upwards of $35 Million after taxes every year. Wow. I went to his brand new building which is along hwy 401 going towards Toronto, it’s almost unbelievable to me. He’s only leasing it but still, I remember his old office with stained up drywall and old carpet and now this gorgeous little glass building. Again when I was 16 years old there was another company in Markham that used to boast to me about how they made $500 Million in annual sales at the time. I told them that they were so mean to people that they probably won’t last. This month I found out they went bankrupt and lost their beautiful building.
Mason visited this month, I met him at a mall and we watched The Corps Bride. I’ve become concerned about my prostate health. Art classes are going well. The class is small, but a lot of fun. It’s like a mini vacation for me. My teacher is a full time artist, he earns his income from art. When I was a child, my teachers thought I would earn my income from my paintings. So did I. But those dreams were dashed, and probably for the best. Although my teacher says his cheapest painting is $1,000. Hmmm.
I sit in art class and I daydream about everything. Which is the same as in high school, I daydreamed during art class then to. My childhood, my current life, my future. Important people in my life, possible wives. My art teacher in high school was super awesome, she liked to listen to the Cranberries on cassette tape and she let me have my own personal tape player so I was always in my own world. My friend Steve lent me some of his music, a style of music called Jungle, and then Nirvana. Another girl gave me an REM tape to borrow. My friend Tony gave me his old radio that had AM, FM and shortwave. This whole month has been about me daydreaming the “what if’s” of life.
In the 90’s I applied for student loans and then decided not to take them, I’ve been paying my college as I go, which means I do it much slower, but debt free. The ultimate goal is to earn a PhD or Doctorate. I don’t think I’m the PhD type but Ill go as far as I can. I should have done my entire life this way.
Growing up, we would use our possessions as gently as possible, and when we outgrew them, we would send them to Guyana. Sometimes I’d get irritated because it seemed like the better stuff would go to Guyana and I’d be stuck with crap. In grade 9 I wore clothes from Goodwill. I remember my $4 pair of jeans with someones name written on the inside tag. “Johnathan.” it said.
Shoes were the most annoying. My shoes were the cheapest shoes you could find. They would always be falling apart and I would repair them as best as possible. I would really wear my shoes out though. In grade 9, for about a full semester the entire bottom of my shoes had simply wore out so my socks and feet were actually touching the ground. It was embarrassing but so much other stuff was going on in life that I just went with it. When you’re defeated, you’re defeated and that’s how I spent most of my young life. I put my feet in plastic bags before I put them in my shoes, and that helped a lot. That’s not actually the worst. At Yorkview Public School there was a rule that you had to wear boots during certain weather conditions and change into clean dry shoes when you got to school. If you didn’t do this, you would have to walk around in your socks all day. Yorkview was a fantastic school. The teachers were overall very kind and we had a neat french immersion program which ensured that I got top grades in french my whole life. But this one rule was nuts. Of course I didn’t have a pair of shoes to change into, so I would always be in my socks, walking down the wet and cold hallways. People would ask why I was so forgetful to bring my “extra pair of shoes.” which I thought was simply a white people luxury at the time, and I would tell them to go to my house and ask my parents and get their head busted open in the process, instead of mine.
Now in terms of glasses, I used to have perfect vision. Then in grade 5 my vision started to slip. I couldn’t see the chalkboard even from the front row, but we couldn’t afford eye glasses. Well, maybe we could – when I told my parents / guardians that I needed glasses, they responded “no, you’re just bad.” Stupid monkey people.
Grade 6, grade 7, grade 8 my teachers would say “if anyone wants to come up to the front to copy off the board you can do that.” I wasn’t the only one, there were several people who really needed glasses. I got my first pair of glasses in December of grade 9 – the end of first semester, and I only got them because my french teacher told me not to return to his class unless I had glasses. The jackass made a mockery out of me in front of everyone, in front of all of my poor friends who couldn’t afford glasses. He was pretty much the most hated teacher in all of high school, everyone hated the guy. During class he would ask me to go get him paper towels from the bathroom, because his armpits were sweaty and he would need to soak up the sweat during class. Bloody french people, I thought to myself. I still think that actually.
I returned the next semester in his class with glasses, the cheapest pair we could find. Unfortunately 1 or 2 of my classmates couldn’t afford it and didn’t return to his class. Some of them didn’t even return to school.
This month I got myself new shoes, and new eye glasses, the kinds I wanted. And I gave a bunch of new clothes, shoes and new prescription eye glasses to people who really need them, who will make good use of them. It’s a nice feeling to take a car load of people to the mall, male and female, young and old and tell them “everyone get what you need and get something you want.”
One boy, age 14 put his brand new glasses on and told me that it feels so good to see properly and that he felt like crying.
I know the feeling.
In high school one of the math teachers, who was also a computer science teacher and also a gym teacher wanted me on the track team, but I couldn’t, I had way too much on my plate already.
I frequently jogged on the schools track though. My schoolmate Danny had a house not far away, overlooking the track. As I would run, he would yell out the window “go asif, go asif, go go go asif!”. I wish I had that motivation now. I feel like I’ve lost some of my passion. I’ve been getting paid constantly from the consulting project I finished almost 12 months ago and although I am working hard during the day, I’m not really pushing for anything like I used to. I’m just coasting. I have several things going but I’m not as on fire for my work like before. Part of the reason is that I’ve been working 7 days a week for the last 2 years on a project that’s taken everything out of me and will hopefully pay off very well.
I have an investment project from 2001 that is finally going to conclude at the end of this year plus I have several other ideas for projects I’d like to start, but I’m sort of just dragging my feet. I go to my mailbox every week to pickup cheques. I’m doing some neat missions projects as usual.
I’ve been working like a madman since what, age 6 or 7. So maybe a short slowdown is nothing to be concerned about. I’ll just try to enjoy it.
Most of my high school friends who graduated and went to college in the traditional sense are currently either unemployed, or employed and just barely making it or hating it. My other friends are in their 30’s and 40’s and still paying off student loans. I met one of my good former schoolmates and he went into engineering. I asked him why he did that, and he said that the high school counselor told him to. I asked him if it’s what he always wanted to do, he said no, he doesn’t know what he wants to do. He will be designing the bridges that we will all be driving on. He’s a good guy though. My point in saying this is that I really hate the rat race of life.
In both middle school and high school people started to really separate into groups (or clubs as I call them). You had the party girls, the dope smokers, the nerds and the loners to name a few. I wanted to be a loner but I would always end up being the leader of the nerds (and some times a loner). The party girls would sleep with as many people as possible and then boast about it during class. The dope smokers would usually be high and had a passion for video games. The nerds weren’t noble either. They would hack into the schools computer systems to look around and learn more about computers, we wouldn’t do mischief or cause harm, and we let our teachers know how to patch up these security flaws. There was this one time I was trying to impress a group of nerds so I set the libraries computers to sort of auto destruct upon boot up, but before anything bad happened I realized how stupid this was and undid everything before anything happened.
Instead, I ended up upgrading many of the schools computers in a way that completely delighted the school plus saved them tons of money. The staff was very happy with me. I enlisted my nerd friends to do a lot of good in my high school. I don’t know how to do any of that stuff anymore. I was an expert for a brief period of time and now I’m a beginner again, I don’t care to know anything about computers anymore, other than how to get my work done on them. I’m usually several software updates behind.
I’m still friends with some of the teachers and staff. Today I was talking to one of the previous staff members from high school, we were recounting some of my antics. He told me that he still talks about me to his circle of friends and colleagues – good stuff, mostly. I was in the food court of the mall today and one of the old nerd friends of mine asked if I could do some consulting for him. I hadn’t seen him since high school, but he walked up to me like we were still there. In a way I wish I was.
Any way, back to my talk about clubs – no club is perfect, but you’ll end up in one so choose wisely or you’ll have many regrets later on. One thing I’m glad of is that I never got into the cool people club. I hung out with them once or twice, but thankfully no more than that. Looking at them today, none of them have done anything with their lives.
In the year 2000 I was a member of an investment club, monthly membership was about $500. I think we had about 100 members. We would meet online at 8am, and have the chat window at the side of the screen. Some of these guys were geniuses. I witnessed a guy
make a 2,000% return in about 3 months and one guy claimed to make 12,000% in one year but we didn’t have any proof. Most people were conservative, aiming for 10% gains per month. I saw their stock trades. I saw what they were doing. I saw the buy orders and sell orders live on the exchange.
Around lunch time, trader all over take a break and you’d see the trading volume on the exchanges drop off. We use this time to relax and chat a bit, getting to know each other. I would catch up on studying mostly. One of my friends in the club said that his wife spends $250,000 USD per month on herself, every month. Month after month, year after year. Clothing, travel, fancy parties, jewelery. That’s how she lived and why he he was compelled to continue to work. Others continued to amass great fortunes because that’s what they loved to do.
On Jan 10 a squirrel tried to humiliate me, and it won. It started out with a squirrel visiting my balcony. So what did I do? I fed it a slice of bread. But it continued to show up daily and I didn’t have time to be feeding it everyday, so this one day I told it to go away, and instead it started using the bathroom on my balcony and eating my mountain bike seat. I put a slice of bread covered in hot pepper sauce hoping it would take a hint. That made it angry and it bit through my cable wire, cutting out my tv. While I saw it chewing the tv cable, I said to it “I’m going to go look up on Yahoo how to kill squirrels” and you know what it did? Yes, it then ate through the internet cable, cutting my internet access before I had a chance.
After I went to Canadian Tire and got some real squirrel repellant and I ran new wires (a big annoyance for me) for the tv and internet and cleaned up the pee and poo it left on my balcony.
Okay, so my friends asked me for like a real simple yet emotionally rewarding cool thing to do to brighten a persons day: so I shared with them a thing I’ve been doing for a long time.
I set aside $20, $100, $500 – whatever I can afford at the time and I keep a list of wonderful hard working people I know who could be blessed by it and then I hide the money plus an encouraging note where they would find it within 24 hours. I’m writing about this not to boast, I keep most of my giving private, but if you’re looking for a great idea like my friends are, this is one.
Last month I hid $500 and a card in a box of chocolate. The hardest part of this whole thing is when you go to the persons house, you need them distracted for enough time, for example when they use the bathroom. You have to move fast! I have been caught trying to hide $400 in someones shoe, $200 under a tin of baby formula. Another thing is you have to make sure it’s somewhere the person will actually check within a reasonable amount of time, make sure they just won’t throw the item away. For example with the chocolate, I put the money in an envelope under the first level of chocolates, so they would have to eat through that first level, pickup the plastic to get to the second level and see the envelope. They didn’t do this though, and to make things worse, I was at their house a few days later and they were asking me to pray because they needed $400 – and I was trying to drop hints to go eat some chocolates. Finally I had to flat out tell them to go look in the chocolate box for money, lol at first they might have thought it was a miracle and I was a prophet. Nope, I’m just a brown man trying to make it in this world.
When I was in grade 2 there was a girl who was different from the others, I think she had a scar on her face or something along those lines. Forgive me if I’m wrong about that part.
She would be made fun of often. Kids can be really nasty and they tend to work in groups.
I came to her rescue this one time and after that she stuck by me always. She would always walk closely behind me, trying not to be seen by me. Sometimes I wouldn’t even know she was there, following behind me quietly smiling. When I would turn around and see her, she would freeze as if that made her invisible, first trying to figure out if she was in trouble, then smiling with relief after I smiled back at her.
Well one day I overheard a group of the bigger boys (this school went up to grade 5 or 6) saying they would pull down her underwear during recess to humiliate her in front of everyone. This horrified me, but being the complete moron that I am, instead of telling the teacher, I told them that I would beat them all up – all 6 of them. One of these kids, named Ronald, might as well have been Andre the Giant or Goliath. Compared to me, he was a big giant. And I was a scrawny little guy that got random nose bleeds and still wet the bed. Worst than that was that my teachers were used to calling 911 because I would randomly faint during class. I was a sickly kid, malnourished and already got beaten up at home. One time I threw up during the national anthem. One time I fainted during a test. Needless to say I wasn’t known as a tough guy in grade 2, at least not yet. Anyway they took me up on my offer, and during lunch break I proceeded to fight 6 kids to defend this girl. The deal was, I would fight them, and they would leave her alone. If I didn’t fight them, they would pull down her underwear.
It was amazing. Oh, no I can’t say that I won in the sense that I beat them all up, because they kicked the crap out of me, even made me swallow sand and dirt. I took punches to the face, my hair pulled, kicks to my balls, scratches. There was blood and tears. I got body slammed several times.
But I did my fair share of damage as well. I fought each kid one by one and sometimes 2 at a time. The worst is when one would try to hold me down while another beats me. Each one of those kids went home with cuts and bruises because of me. The nurse had to tend to our wounds. We all had bruises that would take a few days to heal. Each parent made an inquiry as to what happened to their child, except my parents.
The fight caused such a stir at the school that all the teachers were called, and my super nice teacher, Mrs. Wright cleaned me up. She thought I was amazing, and because of that, I thought she was amazing.
To this very day I still think about, and pray for that girl. I don’t remember her name anymore. I sometimes think it could be Jennifer, but I can’t remember. I hope she’s okay and the Lord knows that I did everything I could for her.
The Bible describes Satan’s fall from heaven, his rise to power, his rule over the earth and his final demise on judgment day, when God binds up Satan and throws him into the lake of fire, with all of his demons and all of his human followers. The bible goes on to describe how all of God’s people live happily ever after in heaven for all eternity. Most biblical manuscripts end the bible with the word Amen.
No matter what, that’s how our story ends. Amen.
You’ve got to watch this new movie called Napoleon Dynamite. This is going to be one of my favorite movies for a very long time. If I had the skills to make a movie, this would be the one I would make. If the Lord asked me to choose my life, I might choose the life of Napoleon Dynamite.
In school, drama was one of the most fun times. By grade 8 everyone wanted me on their drama team. We would come up with unique skits based on books like War of the Worlds or To Kill a Mockingbird. In high school I quickly signed up for the drama class but thanks to all the dope smokers that also signed up (thinking they would get easy credits) I swapped it for Art, which was such a much better decision. (I’m not kidding, one guy pulled out his wiener and peed on the classroom carpet during class, this is the kind of crap teachers had to deal with). I still don’t understand why I didn’t sign up for art in the first place, or both.
In grade school there was an art contest that I won, and my painting, as far as I remember, a very well done tree against a forest was displayed in one of Toronto’s major galleries. Schools from all over came to see and children were with their parents. Except for me, as usual I was without mine. It didn’t completely matter to me, by that time I was usually paying my own way and signing my own permission slips. I was so proud of my work though, nobody could tell that a mean girl scratched a line across the trunk of the tree with her black felt pen. I painted over it and still won.
About a year later the art gallery mailed the piece back to my school, my school mailed it to me (I had moved from North York to Malton by then) and my grandmother threw it out, saying that it was against our Muslim religion to have such art in the house. I reminded her that we recently were taught at our Mosque that the same Muslim religion allows me to beat her for being so disobedient to me, but that didn’t fair very well for me. :) Come on I was like 9 years old.
I would get used to this though, this thing where I would build something and the family in my life would tear it down for one reason or another. Everything was an uphill battle. Nothing was simple. I hear about these young business people who succeeded in a big way and I try to find out about their home life. What kinds of beatings were they taking each day, how many busted noses did they have to clean up right before school, how many times did they come home to see all their possessions gone, how often did 100% of their money go towards family expenses?
Do some art, it goes into the garbage. Buy some neat toy for myself, it gets sent to Guyana to more needy children. Build a business, all the money goes into the family expenses leaving almost nothing for my needs and nothing to reinvest into the business. There were many times that I missed school trips simply because all my money went to the phone bill or car payment or an emergency. When I was in grade 1 I would purchase candy from a convenience store at Bathurst and Finch, reselling it for a profit at school. One day my mom found my money stash and not only did I get a beating, but she took away the money. I couldn’t understand her deep stupidity – I wondered at the time why we bothered coming to Canada if I wasn’t going to get any opportunity – and this was in grade 1!
Once in a while I’d be able to afford both family expenses and mine and I’d sign my own permission slip and have a great day on a school trip. I was about 15 or 16 years old when I dropped out of high school. A few days before I dropped out I brought like $5,000 cash to school, profit I had made doing computer related consulting, and asked a cute girl in the library to keep it in her bra for me till the end of the school day. I don’t know why I brought the money, or why I asked the cute girl to do it. I wasn’t having sex or anything like that, I wasn’t trying to show off I don’t think. I just thought it would be an interesting thing to ask a girl for. She did it to, right in front of me. It was so awesome.
My guidance councilor found out about it though, and called me to his office during math class. He asked me what was going on, my grades went from 90’s to 30’s rapidly. And I told him. He then called a bunch of my friends to his office to gather more info and gain references. By that time I tried to shore up my grades by paying some of the girls to do my homework, and some others to come to my house and be my assistant in my home office and that worked out well. One time, age 15, I was eating a deliciously prepared lunch, watching the Flintstones, while one girl cleaned for me and another was outside changing the tire tube on my mountain bike. My high school councilor listened to these things, and the testimony of my friends made his jaw drop.
This brings me to why I really like Napoleon Dynamite so much. I wonder what life would be like if that was it. No real problems, no real situations, just wake up, feed your Lama, go to school, ride your bike. Or be Kip and talk to hot babes on the internet all day.
In the movie there’s this man named Uncle Rico, and that’s exactly who I’m turning out be. Uncle Rico is old and feels all washed up. He thinks about the 80’s and how far he could have thrown a football. “If the coach would have put me in the championship game, we would have won.” I feel like that’s the story of my life. Being able to do something, but never getting a clean opportunity. Uncle Rico would trade it all for a time machine so he could go back and do it all differently. I would to.
Or maybe I’d just move forward. Why? Jesus promises that this life will be very tough for a lot of people, in fact He promises that it will be just a brutal challenge for most of His followers. The glory, the reward, that happens later.
Napoleon got his happy ending, one day so will every follower of Jesus. Ours will last for all eternity.
A good teacher is priceless. And I do believe that it takes a community to raise a child, especially these days where there aren’t many good parents left in Canada. In middle school I would visit my primary school teachers. In high school my friend Corey and I would visit our middle school teachers. In college I would visit my high school teachers. I’m still friends with some of them, and a lot of them are in the retirement stage. I fear for them though, because even though most of them are in a stage of retirement, the ones who are left might be fired for what is being called politically incorrect or intolerance. Back in my days teachers were in charge of the kids and allowed to teach and say whatever they wanted to say if it would raise up good men and women. For example our gym teacher Mr. K taught us about being responsible, my English teacher Mrs. Bell taught us to wait till we are married to have sex. Today she might be forced to hand out condoms. Today the kids are in charge and the teachers can only say what is politically correct, even if it’s wrong. And because of this I fear that many of Canada’s children will grow up to be wimps. I think the bully problem will get worst and based on what I see on the net, things are getting worst in society.
Anyway about 10 years ago Corey and I visited Mr. Morris and incredibly, not only did he still remember me but he still had an unfinished project of mine tucked away near his desk. He pulled it out from his files and asked me to finish it. I told him no lol but I was amazed that he had my unfinished homework.
He taught me several life lessons I still use to this day:
– Sometimes rules need to be broken. Middle school had a serious rule that only 1 person per class was allowed to go to the bathroom at a time. One day one of our classmates was moving away to Kingston Ontario and was crying, Mr. Morris let her go to the bathroom with a girlfriend. He said no at first, then said yes when he saw her crying.
– Get a different perspective on problems when you are stumped. He would do this thing where he would write a complicated problem on the chalk board and pretend he was solving it with us. He would pretend he didn’t know the answer, get up from his desk and go stand in a bizarre corner of the classroom. He’s say something like “I need to see this problem from a different angle.” I still do this to this day.
Now here’s one of the real reasons I really liked him: At that time in life, grade 8, I didn’t know anything about computers, I used to make fun of people who had them, “oh hi I’m Asif, I’m a genius, I have a computer, I can help you with your taxes.” is what I used to say to people who had computers. Many of my classmates had them though. Mr. Morris would ask me to fix computers and it got me out of class. I don’t know if he thought I knew about computers, because I didn’t, I rarely ever touched them at the time. It could have been some kind of lesson he was trying to teach me. But I would learn all about it because the more computers I could fix for the school, the more class time I could avoid. I ended up fixing just about every computer at that school, while getting full class credit.
He is on my list of favorite teachers. Of course today he can’t pull those kinds of stunts. Kids like me would be heavily medicated and given false disabilities. He would simply be fired for giving too much homework or for pushing kids too hard. Teachers are no longer in charge, it’s nut job parents and kids who are in charge, and if their children don’t want to do their homework, the parents just complain till the teacher gets fired. Get their children falsely diagnosed with some fake disability and over-medicated. I see parents all the time who complain that their child has ADHD, when really they are just bad parents and their child is spoiled rotten. Okay, obviously some of the kids have real disabilities, but every reasonable adult knows that most people fake it. Go ahead, ask your doctor.
The last day of Lancaster middle school was filled with action, one of the local dope smokers lit the school on fire, apparently starting with the massive stage curtains in the gym. Turns out that now many years later the school will undergo a massive renovation.
A few years later in high school when I was walking up Airport Road back to Malton, this same kid caught up with me for a chat. He lived in one of the newer, nicer houses and had a lot of toys. People told me he was basically a spoiled brat who was always on playtime. He ruined that last day of school for us, my backpack had some of my prized possessions inside at a time in life when I didn’t have very much at all. It was lost due to the fire.
Fast forward to when I was in high school, he was coming home from his probation meeting or something like that and I was coming home from job hunting. I considered pushing him off the sidewalk into traffic but during the long walk with him I thought it through. Too many witnesses first of all, but more than that, I felt sorry for him. He was a real loser. Today I hope and pray that he’s doing better.
Today I woke up, had some tea, read the bible, worshiped, spent time in prayer, then I worked to around 530pm, then did some errands. For dinner I had a salad and a cheeseburger from Mcdonalds. As a treat I have cotton candy. Now I’m typing up this journal and hopefully I’ll watch some tv tonight, go out for a prayer walk and be ready for bed around 11. Almost every day I’ve been doing a lot of biking riding all over the trans Canada trail and Malton with Mason and Eggbert. Sometimes we invite others along and it’s really fun. One time we went to Woodbine Centre after to get Chinese food and another time we went to Popeye’s at Albion Road to get biscuits. I like getting discount clothing from Albion Mall. They have track suits there for $8.
I have this box of precious memories, I call it my treasure chest. My grandma would usually throw out every good thing I had, so it was a struggle to keep certain things hidden within the furniture of my bedroom. I’ve amassed a small box with hundreds of little important trinkets that I like to look at. I’ve been keeping them in a secure location the last few years, I have them with me again. This month I’ve been looking through it, organizing it as best I can. There’s my stamp collection, stock certificate collection, old currency collection, fathers day cards to me. Photos, old video tape, there’s notes written to me by children that say “I love you Asif” or “Asif I wish you were my dad”, drawings, old letters, report cards that say “Asif can do better.” If those teachers would have spent a few nights at my house they would have given me straight A’s.
My neighbor across the hall does Tae Kwon Do. She seems to get locked out of her apartment often. On May 13 I invented a really good lemon chicken recipe. I own 2 pairs of shoes and I’m happy with that.
On May 29, Mason and I did our longest bike riding adventure so far. 7 hours in total, we rode from Malton to Harbor front in Toronto. We used the Trans Canada trail, riding through forests and so on, so it wasn’t a direct route. We didn’t ride for speed, but for enjoyment. When we got to harbor front we took a break, ate a hot dog from a street vendor, and then started the ride back. I saw chipmunks up close for the first time, and there was a shot my camera couldn’t get – we were riding through a forest, on a dirt path, something like you’d see in a movie. The sunlight pierced through the trees and it looked like beams of light shining through. We got back after dark. Talk about work out. Talk about fun.
I took a trip to Peterborough Ontario, I haven’t been here since like 1999 or 2000 and the last time I was here, I didn’t get to stop and enjoy as much as I wanted, but this time I did. Now when I got out of the van, of course the button on my jeans flew right off. It got sewn up right there in the parking lot while they were still on me which gave all the onlookers something to talk about before service.
We went to this church that had free delicious orange drink and donuts that you could eat before, during and after service. I have never seen this before in my life and I think it’s just the greatest thing. Also the sermon started with a Jim Carey video clip on a projector screen and I have never seen this kind of technology used in a church before, just old fashioned overhead projectors and not even free water. After there was a question and answer time. This is the most modern church I’ve ever seen.
Any way to my main story. Back in like grade 6 there was a beautiful girl name Maryanne. We called her psycho bitch because she used to beat us up, put caterpillars down our shirt and squish them. Every time we would see her, we would run away because of all her roughhousing. This was crazy because we (the boys) would roughhouse as well. I mean back then we would light things on fire and cause all kinds of mischief, but we couldn’t handle being beaten up by a beautiful girl.
I became a Christian at age 17, and I lost contact with Maryanne a few years prior, although I would hear about her once in a while because she dated some of my close friends.
When I was in college and doing an internship around age 19, I met her again at Tim Hortons. She was a cashier and just had a round of chemotherapy. She had cancer and had lost all her hair from the treatment. She was smiling at me while holding back tears. “I’ll never have children” she said. Without thinking (story of my life) I told her that Jesus would heal her, and tried to tell her as much as I could about my new found faith before I had to go (there were other customers in the line). I gave her my contact information.
I make promises to people all the time. Most of the time I come through, sometimes I don’t. When I tell people about Jesus though, I really boast. I boast big. And I had boasted big about Jesus to Maryanne in front of other people. When I got home I almost started to panic, because I realized I promised this girl that Jesus would come through for her and that one day she would have kids.
Fast forward to right now, several years later. I had just picked up a Medium pizza with Nathan and when we were walking outside of the mall in front of Price Chopper, I hear a scream “asif, asif!”. Maryanne ran up to me and before I had a chance to react, she jumped on me, arms and legs wrapped around me completely. I was surprised my spine didn’t collapse. All the weight lifting has been working out. Her hair is long and beautiful, in fact she’s more beautiful than I remember.
She went on to Nathan about how great of a man I am. (She and Nathan had never met prior). She really went on. And of course I’m not, but God is so great He came through for both me and Maryanne. I wish everyone who was in the Tim Hortons years prior could see. Both of us grew up in tough environments. Both of us came up from the wrong side of the tracks. Both of us have been healed by Jesus.
And yes, she now has a beautiful biological son. I write these journals so that I can one day read them again. But this story doesn’t require a journal entry. I’ll remember it for eternity.
There’s a bad man we all know and put up with, and he beats his wife and children. Everyone knows it. They don’t know it because someone told them, they know it because they aren’t morons. His wife used to show up with black eyes and bruises, saying she ran into a door (do all women use this excuse?) and his children would sometimes let it slip that their dad beats them. To be clear, this was all in 2001, during very difficult times when much was going on all at once.
Back in 2001 before I moved to Ottawa I was asked in haste, after a long day of work to give a reference for this person, to save his life really, more so begged to give him a good reference. He promised he was a changed man, so I gave a quick “he’s not so bad, this whole thing has been blown out of proportion” type reference. This saved his sorry ass, and later I would find out that he was 10x worst than I thought.
Growing up, I myself fell through the cracks as did many of my friends. Daily punches, cuts on bruises all over. Bloody noses, bumps on my head were normal. Peel police would get to know me by name, and I would get to know some of them by name, since they were at my house so often.
Good teachers would often ask about cuts and bruises and I would make up excuses, and my friends who were in the same situation would trade war stories.
Girls always had it 100 times worst though, and their war stories were the worst. Being abused by their moms boyfriends while being videotaped or prostituted out by their crack head moms to strangers. It made me and my guy friends think that things weren’t really so bad for us after all. We got used to seeing social services and hearing and saying lies upon lies. You’d visit a friends house and social services would show up, or you’d visit my house and the police would show up. I wouldn’t even invite someone to my house until I knew what their home life was. If they had a good home life, they wouldn’t be invited to mine because they wouldn’t understand. Same with them, I couldn’t be invited to some peoples house until they knew what mine was like.
White people, black people, brown people, everyone had it rough in one way or another. In grade 7 I kept a photo of a picture perfect home in my pocket, looking at it to make me happy. One time in grade 7 I was planning on teaching this one bully a lesson as I was known to do, and my super duper awesome teacher Mrs. Prates told us all that we should be nice to him, a young thug, because his dad beats him, and we hazed her because we were all being beaten but he was the only wimp that let the teachers know. Mrs. Prates is one of my favorite teachers to this day, but this was all way over her head.
When I was 7 I slept with a heavy metal flashlight, by the time I was 11 I slept with a trusty switchblade. By the time I was 13 I had several weapons. One time my boss at Pickwicks Potatoes drove me home from Dr. Fleas Flea Market and there were 4 police cruisers at my house. It shocked the crap out of him, a middle aged Jew, but me, a 13 year old Muslim had a list of about 75 great excuses as to why they were there and I said my lie with a smile and went back to work the next weekend as if nothing happened. It was the only way to survive at the time.
About 2 years later I stopped smiling. My list of great excuses began to anger me, I was getting older and growing, but things were very much the same at home. One very early morning I woke up hearing the angry screamings of my mom and her boyfriend, and I figured I would save the police another trip to our house by taking care of the situation myself. I grabbed my trusty Louisville slugger, and kicked down her door swinging the bat at both of them, and I clearly threatened to kill them both. My exact words were something along the lines of “I’m going to kill you, and I’m going to kill you, if you don’t stop this crap and grow the f up.” Now for those of you who know me, you know I don’t use that kind of language under normal circumstance. There’s just something about family that brings out the crazy in everyone.
There’s a sort of freedom you gain when you threaten to kill someone and really mean it. And I’m not joking, I would have actually killed them both that warm summer morning, and lived happily ever after knowing I made the world a better place. To be fair, I now know that her life was much harder than mine.
Fast forward to today, we’ve all given our life to Jesus, my moms home is the place ALL my friends like to hang out. There’s peace, joy, food, laughter, fun stories (ask her about the time I ate my own poo) and just general goodwill. Shes known as the super cool mom and I’m known as the lucky son. She takes in everyone, all the teens in town and there’s always fun stories and joy to be had. Just a few nights ago she called me asking if I can help her out, she took out several teen girls and boys bowling or something like that, and there was some project they wanted to do that would really help them out but cost too much. The teens were super excited and I was really happy to be a part of it all. Only Jesus can spark these kinds of changes.
I heard in the news that churches are in decline in Canada because people no longer believe in God. This is a lie. This is a complete lie made up by liberal media and the liberal government. Churches are in decline in Canada because people do believe in God, and they are scared out of their mind that if they or their children go to church, people will find out what’s going on in their homes. An atheists worst nightmare is when they will one day face the God they’ve been pretending to not believe in. But we’re all going to have to face Him one day.
If you’re reading this and you know me, then you know that I’m a workaholic. I’ve been battling this for years. As soon as the sun rises, I like to be up and working. As soon as the sun sets, I finish up for the day. In the summer the days are long, and so I work as long as it’s bright outside. This leads to burnout, and so I’ve begun to hate summer. I’ve actually ruined relationships simply because I’ve been too busy to care about anything else. When I was younger this problem was worst, I would actually skip occasional nights of sleep – I mean entire nights, just so I could work more and get ahead. I don’t have that kind of energy anymore so I do sleep a full night for the most part.
Over the last few years I’ve gotten really involved in digging fresh water wells in third world countries and the costs are so variable. In one place a well can cost $2,500 because you don’t have to dig very deep, in other places $300,000 or more depending on the engineering and machinery involved. I used to have a goal of like 10,000 fresh water wells but when I realized how impossible that number was I lowered it to like 1,000 and I think I’ll just lower this to like 100 or less because it’s such an uphill struggle. If it was the only thing in my life I could put more energy into it, but as I’m typing this, I’m also holding a baby and tonight we are going to help someone move.
I really hate summer.